Results tagged “covers”

Here is the cover for the forthcoming March 2010 anthology Warriors, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

This book has everything!

• Stories from the Spinner Rack by George R.R. Martin
• The King of Norway by Cecilia Holland
• Forever Bound by Joe Haldeman
• The Triumph by Robin Hobb
• Clean Slate by Lawrence Block
• And Ministers of Grace by Tad Williams
• Soldierin’ by Joe Lansdale
• Dirae by Peter S. Beagle
• The Eagle and the Rabbit by Steven Saylor
• Seven Years from Home by Naomi Novik
• The Custom of the Army by Diana Gabaldon
• The Pit by James Rollins
• Out of the Dark by David Weber
• The Girls from Avenger by Carrie Vaughn
• Ancient Ways by S.M. Stirling
• Ninieslando by Howard Waldrop
• Recidivist by Gardner Dozois
• My Name is Legion by David Morrell
• Defenders of the Frontier by Robert Silverberg
• The Scroll by David Ball
• The Mystery Knight by George R.R. Martin

Come on! We have to wait until March!? *sighs*

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams is getting new covers on its five novels.

And just in time for the release of the sixth book in the trilogy, And Another Thing… by Eoin Colfer!

It was a sad shock when I discovered that Douglas Adams had passed on to that great salmon in the sky. I was a bookseller in 2001 and it shook our store to its core. He was only 49 years old and had a plethora of hilarious stories to yet tell. There have only been a handful of writers who made me laugh continuously while reading a book—Terry Pratchett and David Sedaris being the other two of the the trifecta—and Mr. Adams sat atop that triangle. He will forever be one of the best comedic and satiric writers of our time.

I’m happy to see these new covers. Sometimes getting books into a new generation of readers is about re-packaging them and making them salient once more.

Here are the new covers in their salmony delight:

If you haven’t read these books and want something light and fun to read, definitely give these a try. You won’t regret it.

Here is the UK cover for Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb, the second part of the Rain Wilds Chronicles that began with Dragon Keeper.

I’m not a huge fan of covers utilizing icons as their main emphasis. This is usually done by marketing departments to try and infiltrate the contemporary fiction readership, a readership that contains a stigma toward the fantasy genre. I would much rather have a cover that boldly illustrates what it is.

But that’s just me.

Then again, perhaps the resultant sales would make it worthwhile. Who knows.

Dragon Haven will be published in the UK in March 2010.

Blackbeard is riding a new tidal wave into comic book stores!

As reported in July HERE, Dynamite Entertainment is publishing a comic book series called Blackbeard: Legend of the Pyrate King, devoted to Edward Teach—the man also known as the notorious pirate Blackbeard.

Here is the Lucio Parillo cover for Issue #2!

And hot on the heels of the cover—or the bow, as it were—a new interview with writer Robert Napton, who talks about the series and the infamous murderer of the seas, has been posted on Newsarama HERE!

The first issue will be released in October. Issue #2 in November.

A pirate’s life for me!

And really bad eggs!

I’m always a bit sad when authors I greatly admire write in other established worlds, and this year I’ve been made doubly sad.

First, Greg Bear is writing a trilogy of Halo novels for Tor Books. Greg is my favorite science fiction writer and a man I respect for his hard science knowledge.

Second, Greg Keyes has signed on to write two novels set in the universe of the successful computer game Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Greg is a beautiful writer capable of bringing characters to life ala George R. R. Martin, and I feel quite strongly his series The Kingdoms of Thorn & Bone is highly underrated and undersold.

Hmm… two Gregs this year writing in other worlds. Must be a first name thing.

Anyway, The Infernal City by Greg Keyes is a tie-in novel to the Elder Scrolls computer game. Although I am not a gamer, I am really looking forward to reading something new from Mr. Keyes.

It will be published as a trade paperback in November 24, 2009.

Let’s hope we can get an excerpt posted here in early November!

Stay tuned!

I think Jim Butcher is one of the luckiest S-O-Bs in the genre!

Why do I think that?

Well, he is super talented, for one. I hate people like that, people who make me just want to return to bed to read rather than do my own writing. People who make my writing feel unnecessary because they do such a great job and how could I ever possibly put out a book that sits on a similar shelf?

But I really think Jim is lucky because of the cover art he gets for his Dresden Files series. I love the artwork Chris McGrath creates for Jim’s covers; it holds a gritty realism that fits for the world of Harry Dresden.

Posted above is the cover artwork for the forthcoming Dresden Files book, Changes. It will be published April 6, 2010 and assuredly will be a bestselling upon release.

We have some time to wait.

But meanwhile, click HERE for a brand new interview with Jim and his wife Shannon!

Enjoy!

The tentative UK cover of The Other Lands.

Aside from writing for Suvudu, I also maintain the website for author and newest John W. Campbell Award winner, David Anthony Durham.

David has a new book coming out. The Other Lands, the sequel to his fantastic epic fantasy novel Acacia, will be published on September 15th. To celebrate this release I am about finished with an overhaul on his website, which will be done over the course of the next week and will include the first chapter excerpt from The Other Lands.

Pretty cool, huh?

It doesn’t stop there though. David has just posted a contest on his blog featuring a giveaway, one book being The Other Lands! Click HERE to learn how to enter.

What else is coming up for David?

Suvudu will be holding a chat with him on September 15th. Information on that is forthcoming soon. And David will be having two more giveaways soon. So be sure to visit his blog regularly for his most up to date news!

Until September 15th! Here comes The Other Lands!

Newsarama posted the variant cover to The Talisman: The Road of Trials #1!

Here is the press release:

Del Rey, an imprint of Ballantine Books at the Random House Publishing Group, announced today Mike Krahulik, artist and half of the creative duo behind the hit gaming and geek culture-based webcomic Penny Arcade (www.penny-arcade.com) as the variant cover artist for Issue 1 of Stephen King and Peter Straub’s The Talisman, on sale in November.

“Penny Arcade is the online phenomenon which debuted in 1998 whose global readership generate over 50 million pageviews a month. Mike Krahulik is also known as Gabe, his online persona in the Penny Arcade comics. Krahulik has lent his distinctive art style to promotional comics for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Prince of Persia, Fallout 3, and other video games, as well as advertisements for the Entertainment Software Association.

“The epic saga of The Talisman debuts with Issue 0, a never-before-told prequel to the story, to be published by Del Rey Comics in October. The Talisman novel, originally published in 1984, is the story of a teen boy named Jack Sawyer, who can save his dying mother only by retrieving a magical talisman. To find it he must cross back and forth between our world and the frightening and dangerous landscape of its “twinner” counterpart. Issue 0 explores the separate lives of Jack’s father—in our world, and in the mysterious realm known as the Territories—and how evil scheming will forever change Jack’s peaceful life.

“The series is being adapted by Robin Furth and illustrated by Tony Shasteen, with regular cover art by Massimo Carnevale and coloring by Nei Ruffino. The Talisman Issue 0 will be available in comic book stores everywhere on October 21, 2009, and The Talisman Issue 1 will hit comics stands on November 18, 2009.

At last, here is the cover to Shadowrise by Tad Williams! It is a Todd Lockwood cover and it is moody as all hellfire.

Me likey!

As reported last week, Shadowrise is the third book in the Shadowmarch series, with an as-of-yet untitled fourth book coming soon! Why do i say untitled? Well, I don’t see anywhere on the Shadowrise cover that it is Part I of II. That leads me to believe the fourth book will have its own title.

At least that’s what my inner Sherlock Holmes is telling me.

When we will get that next title or see cover art for it, who knows, but it will likely be soon since Book 4 will be published hot on the heels of Shadowrise in 2010.

Bring on more Williams! And Lockwood! Looking forward to it!

So I’m supposed to be working throughout the day—and (if my bosses are reading) I am! But part of my job is to run our @bantamspectra Twitter account. Which I do—with perhaps too great a frequency.

The problem is, I get into some fascinating conversations with my followers (the fact that I consider them my followers is irrelevant for this discussion), and yesterday was a great example of starting with a small topic, and it exploding into something quite fascinating.

It all started with the rather (or so I thought) innocuous query:

Do you know and/or care about the difference between urban fantasy and paranormal romance?

The response was, while perhaps not overwhelming, surely whelming.

Two camps seemed to set up: those that did know the difference and didn’t care, and those who did know the difference and did.

As @Tupholos said: “Don’t care. I suppose people with strong pos or neg feelings for one or the other might care. I like ‘em both.”

@LynnAAR added: “I read both PR and UF, so no. However, I do like to know what genre I’m buying.” When I asked her if it was so she knew what she was getting into, she replied: “Exactly. If a book is well-written, I’ll like it regardless, but I still like to know what I’m picking up.”

So even those who don’t care actually do care to a degree, in that their immediate selections (what they decided to read) were made fully cognizant that they were holding either paranormal romance or urban fantasy.

For my followers, then, the difference was important, if only so that they were geared up (in the right frame of mind) for the book they were about to read.

(Getting into the meat of things, after the jump—including books that readers of both UF and PR should enjoy)

Several months ago, Dan Brown traveled to New York City to visit the Random House offices. With him the new Robert Langdon novel, The Lost Symbol. It was time to turn in the final manuscript and meet with his agent and editor about the new book’s September release plans.

Normally this would not be huge news, especially several months after the fact. Mr. Brown does not write fantasy—well, not fantasy as we all tend to think of it, anyway—and therefore has no place here on Suvudu. But as I’ve said repeatedly I love highlight great looking cover art and any kind of neat story about writers in general.

Well, there is the cover to The Lost Symbol. Groovy.

The real question is: Are there hidden symbols in the cover for us to decipher??

While Mr. Brown was at Random House, he also visited my boss. She oversees the bulk of websites under the RH umbrella and helps out numerous authors with their web presences. She had done some quick work on his website several weeks earlier and Mr. Brown sought her out to thank her.

He didn’t need to do that. But he did. And I think that speaks volumes about the man beyond his work. I am always surprised by how nice even the most successful writers are and how one thank you can make one’s day.

So kudos to you, Mr. Brown! I can’t wait to see the media fly apart in September while covering all of the local bookstores when The Lost Symbol is released!

Bring on Langdon!

While walking around the convention I cam across the Tor-Forge booth, where I have several friends who were deep in the throes of fandom. I looked over their booth, looking at the titles they had coming soon, but quickly settled on the cover to The Winds of Dune.

Why?

Because it has a new cover I haven’t seen yet. The Dune books over the last decade have had a distinctive cover design, but this year Tor decided to depart from the last ten years and do something a bit different.

I love it. It’s such a gorgeous piece of artwork. It evokes Dune quite nicely!

Nice job Irene Gallo and crew at Tor!

You know me. I always love a great looking cover.

And here is such a one! I’m happy to see Tor, who I feel has not done a very good job taking Todd Lockwood’s amazing art and incorporating it cover art, just taking the UK artwork and layouts for Steven Erikson’s Malazan series and using it in the US!

While Tor is spot on with its covers and I really enjoy what Irene Gallo does because she’s great at it, for some reason they just couldn’t capture Erikson’s work as a presentation. Odd, really.

What do you think? Like the cover art for Dust of Dreams?

I love it!

This cover image was released while I was away at Comic Con, but I thought I’d better post it despite it being on several blogs already.

I always enjoy a good cover. This one is almost there for me. Usually Robin Hobb’s UK covers kick the US covers butt, the UK done by artist John Howe. This year the UK took a different route though and it is easy for me to post that I prefer the US cover for Dragon Keeper.

That said, it still needs a bit of work. The artwork is okay but the fonts and the colors used in those fonts should be revisited. I know, I know, they match what has come before but that is not always a good thing.

The yellow used in that cover deadens what could be a very good presentation.

For me.

What do you think?

Comic Con is many things, but it is definitely one large information dump of fresh news on the public!

Sometimes it isn’t even intended to be.

When I visited at the Random House booth a few days ago, I tried to take in all of their forthcoming titles. The publisher posts giant posters of their new and soon to be published novels and they are spread over a large set of booths that dazzles the eye. It is very cool to watch people slow as they make their way through the Random House aisle, their eyes gazing at new prospective reads.

Usually there are one or two posters that really stand out. This year it was the cover above.

In October 2009, Random House is publishing a hardcover omnibus containing His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade and Black Powder War by Naomi Novik. The books have only been released in the US as mass market paperbacks, so it was time they got the hardcover treatment that Victory of Eagles received. The cover of the book is, in my opinion, absolutely stunning!

What do you think?

In other news, director Peter Jackson spoke at Comic Con last night and mentioned that once The Hobbit films are finished he will be taking another closer look at His Majesty’s Dragon as a feature film adaptation.

Peter Jackson. Directing a Naomi Novik tale. With flying dragons.

How can that get more awesome??

Make the movies, Peter!

It is Saturday! Time to sit back, relax and read some of the interesting posts made by fans of fantasy and science fiction this last week!

In unordered intention:

• Book Review: Blood Water by Dean Vincent Carter - SciFiChick
• Interview: Mark Chadbourn - Fantasy Book Critic
• Book Review: Fire Raiser by Melanie Rawn - Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist
• Book Review: Star Wars: Omen by Christie Golden - Graeme’s Fantasy Review
• Book Review: Death-Bringer by Patrick Tilley - The Wertzone
• Cover Art: Bauchelain and Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson - A Dribble of Ink

There are a great many fans out there who put in a a lot of time and effort helping others find the most enjoyable books, reviews and interviews the internet(s) have to offer. Every week this will be a shout-out to those people if they have contributed something interesting in sci-fi and fantasy!

Know of a fan-run blog that deserves to be read but it isn’t featured here?

Let me know!

Here is the final cover for The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.

As I wrote in the March article The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan?, Tor accidentally leaked a cover that could not have been the cover to the first book in the Memory of Light trilogy that concludes the Wheel of Time series. It was horrible and the information associated with it made no sense. As I postulated then, more than likely it was a mock up cover for marketing purposes that never should have hit the internet(s).

As you can see, the new cover is the same scene as the mock cover—just better painted.

For years the cover art on the Wheel of Time books has been declining but Tor stuck with artist Darrell K. Sweet, keeping the series uniform. In a way, I guess, they should be applauded by that. I mean, as a book collector, nothing drives me more crazy than an artist change in mid-series. At one time Darrell K. Sweet was one of the hottest cover artists out there. The work he supplied on the early books of the series is fantastic, full of vibrant color and life, but as the series progressed it became dull and boring—the cover on Knife of Dreams being exceptionally bad, in my opinion. The Gathering Storm cover is an improvement over the leaked cover, but it is still a lackluster cover for one of the strongest selling fantasy series in history.

It is at least better than Knife of Dreams!

Do you like it? The Gathering Storm is one third of the enormous climax for the Wheel of Time series. Does the cover art have that climax in mind?

To me, it doesn’t.

I swear, RA Salvatore is one of the luckiest authors going.

Without a doubt.

I’ve known Bob for seven or eight years. He has created arguably one of the most well known fantasy characters ever in Drizzt Do’Urden and writes some of the best battle sequences every year.

Beyond that, Bob is just a super nice guy, easy to talk to, and after two decades of professional writing loves it as much now as when he began.

A man who works hard deserves all he receives.

No, when I say he is lucky, I mean the covers he gets!

Leading off our coverage of the 2009 Eisner Awards are the nominees for Best Cover Artist. Cover art differs from the internal art (in most cases) in that it allows for a richer visual experience in color, layout, and complexity. Cover art can range from shocking to cinematic, stylized to toned down, it can contain characters from the comic or it could be more of a mood piece. The one thing it had better be, though, is evocative of the story because comics, perhaps more so than any other medium, wear their souls on the outside as much as the inside.

Makes sense as the cover will also be competing for a potential reader’s eye on his or her favorite comics shop wall, right? And, of course, there is the potential for the art to become attached to a collectible item. But that’s another thing all together.

So who are being recognized as the stand-outs in their field this year? Here’s the list:

Of course, we could break down all their individual merits and describe the art too you…but that wouldn’t really be doing them justice. So come along as we take a look at what each artist is bringing to the table and view a sampling of their artwork. It’s a comics wall from the best of the best, coming up after the jump.

Here is the US cover for the forthcoming Terry Brooks book, A Princess of Landover!

A Summary:

Princess Mistaya Holiday hasn’t been fitting in too well at Carrington Women’s Preparatory. People don’t seem to appreciate her using her magic to settle matters in the human world. So when she summons a dragon to teach a lesson to the snotty school bully, she finds herself suspended.

But Mistaya couldn’t care less—she wants nothing more than to continue her studies under Questor the court magician and Abernathy the court scribe. However, her father Ben Holiday, the King of Landover, has rather different plans in mind for her. He thinks he’ll teach her about perseverance and compromise by sending her to renovate Libiris, the long-abandoned royal library.

How horribly dull.

But before long, Mistaya will long for the boredom of cataloguing an unfeasible number of derelict books—for deep within the library there lies a secret so dangerous that it threatens the future of Landover itself…

A Princess of Landover will be released August 18, 2009!